The critical shortage of nurses and other health care professionals has lead to increasing dependence on electronic monitoring of patients. This ability to allow a caregiver to direct his or her attention elsewhere in reliance on an electronic component is obviously something that most hospitals and nursing homes are very interested in.
As one example of the sort of monitoring that is done, it is well documented that the elderly and post-surgical patients are at a heightened risk of falling. These individuals are often afflicted by gait and balance disorders, weakness, dizziness, confusion, visual impairment, and postural hypotension (i.e., a sudden drop in blood pressure that causes dizziness and fainting), all of which are recognized as potential contributors to a fall. Additionally, cognitive and functional impairment, and sedating and psychoactive medications are also well recognized risk factors.
A fall places the patient at risk of various injuries including sprains, fractures, and broken bones—injuries which in some cases can be severe enough to eventually lead to a fatality. Of course, those most susceptible to falls are often those in the poorest general health and least likely to recover quickly from their injuries. In addition to the obvious physiological consequences of fall-related injuries, there are also a variety of adverse economic and legal consequences that include the actual cost of treating the victim and, in some cases, caretaker liability issues.
Of course, direct monitoring of high-risk patients, as effective as that care strategy might appear to be in theory, suffers from the obvious practical disadvantage of requiring additional staff if the monitoring is to be in the form of direct observation. Of course, such continuous visual monitoring, in addition to being impractical, can intrude on a patient's legitimate and legal need for some amount of privacy. Thus, the trend in patient monitoring has been toward the use of electrical devices to signal changes in a patient's circumstance to a caregiver who might be located either nearby or remotely at a central monitoring facility, such as a nurse's station. The obvious advantage of an electronic monitoring arrangement is that it frees the caregiver to pursue other tasks away from the patient. Additionally, when the monitoring is done at a central facility a single person can monitor multiple patients which can result in decreased staffing requirements.
Generally speaking, electronic monitors work by first sensing an initial status of a patient, and then generating a signal when that status changes, e.g., he or she has sat up in bed, left the bed, risen from a chair, etc., any of which situations could pose a potential cause for concern in the case of an at-risk patient. Electronic bed and chair monitors typically use a pressure sensitive switch in combination with a separate electronic monitor which might utilize a microprocessor or other logical device of some sort. In a common arrangement, a patient's weight resting on a pressure sensitive mat (i.e., a “sensing” mat) completes an electrical circuit, thereby signaling the presence of the patient to the monitor. When the weight is removed from the pressure sensitive switch, the electrical circuit is interrupted, which fact is similarly sensed by the monitor. The monitor responds to the now-opened circuit by triggering some sort of alarm—either electronically (e.g., to the nursing station via a conventional nurse call system) or audibly (via a built-in siren) or both. Additionally, many variations of this arrangement are possible and electronic monitoring devices that track changes in other patient variables (e.g., wetness/enuresis, patient activity/inactivity, etc.) are available for some applications.
General information relating to mat sensors and electronic monitors for use in patient monitoring may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,179,692, 4,295,133, 4,700,180, 5,600,108, 5,633,627, 5,640,145, 5,654,694, and 6,111,509 (the last of which concerns electronic monitors generally). Additional information may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,484,043, 4,565,910, 5,554,835, 5,623,760, 6,417,777 (sensor patents) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,727 (holsters for electronic monitors), the disclosures of all of which patents are all incorporated herein by reference. Further, U.S. Pat. No. 6,307,476 (discussing a sensing device which contains a validation circuit incorporated therein), and U.S. patent Ser. Nos. 09/944,622, (for automatically configured electronic monitor alarm parameters), and Ser. No. 10/125,059 (for a lighted splash guard) are similarly incorporated herein by reference.
Note that the instant invention is suitable for use with a wide variety of patient sensors in addition to pressure sensing switches including, without limitation, temperature sensors, patient activity sensors, toilet seat sensors (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,945,914), wetness sensors (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,292,102), decubitus ulcer sensors (e.g., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/591,887), etc. Thus, in the text that follows the terms “mat” or “patient sensor” should be interpreted in its broadest sense to apply to any sort of patient monitoring switch or device, whether the sensor is pressure sensitive or not.
One perennial problem with using an electronic alarm to monitor a patient is that such electronics are prone to being tampered with by the patient. That is, many patients quickly learn that those electronic monitors that have an manually operated on/off switch (or, in some cases, a functionally equivalent reset/hold switch) that will disable the unit, thereby allowing them to exit the bed without raising an alarm. Of course, the ability to power down (or reset) the monitor is a desirable feature both from a power savings standpoint and from the point of view of the care giver, as it allows the unit to be quickly disabled when the patient is removed from the sensor and quickly terminates the sounding of a disruptive alarm which such is not appropriate. Further, accreditation associations such as Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Health Organizations will not certify an institution where equipment is used that has an on/off switch that can be operated the patient. However, that feature can be turned against the caregiver if the patient is easily able to activate it.
Thus, what is needed is an electronic patient monitor which can be readily powered down/disabled by the caregiver but which is resistant to tampering by the patient.
Heretofore, as is well known in the patient monitor arts, there has been a need for an invention to address and solve the above-described problems and, more particularly, there has been a need for an electronic patient monitor that utilizes an external power-down switch but which is resistant to tampering by the patient. Accordingly, it should now be recognized, as was recognized by the present inventor, that there exists, and has existed for some time, a very real need for a system for monitoring patients that would address and solve the above-described problems.
Before proceeding to a description of the present invention, however, it should be noted and remembered that the description of the invention which follows, together with the accompanying drawings, should not be construed as limiting the invention to the examples (or preferred embodiments) shown and described. This is so because those skilled in the art to which the invention pertains will be able to devise other forms of this invention within the ambit of the appended claims.